


Like Family

by beanarie



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8769061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: Let this be a lesson to all: only speak ill of Dora the Explorer if you are prepared for the fall-out.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Difficult to say out loud](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8593225) by [NairobiWonders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NairobiWonders/pseuds/NairobiWonders). 



Their time was up. Joan had every reason to believe her punishment was over. She's proven wrong with one simple command. "Okay, now close your eyes!"

Joan wiggles her nose, feeling the pull of a temporary tattoo on her cheek. She has no idea what the tattoo is, having been told she wasn't allowed to see until the time was right. "Really?"

A pair of voices chant in stereo, first just one, but it's joined quickly by the second. "Dooo it. Dooo it. Dooo it."

"Fine!" She breaks, laughing and waving her hands. Her nails are three different colors and those colors are enhanced by flower decals on her thumbs and hearts on her pinkies. "They're closed! They're closed!" 

A few feet to her left, she hears a giggley, "You too!" Kitty lets loose a long, exaggerated sigh that sets the kids off again.

Tiny hands take her by the wrists, tugging her forward. "You're... watching to make sure we don't fall, right?" She doesn't know much about healthcare in Texas and she has no desire to expand that knowledge by breaking an ankle, or a nose.

"Of course!" says the six year old, Simone. Joan isn't surprised when four year old Natasha echoes her almost immediately. 

"Of course! Of course of course! Don't you _trust_ us?" 

Madly, she thinks, _A horse is a horse, of course, of course..._

Despite the two-pronged reassurance, she opens her eyes a crack, every once in a while, when the girls aren't watching. Again, she wants her bones and cartilage to remain whole. This decision allows her to prevent Kitty and Natasha's collision course with one of the other shelter residents, a preoccupied brunette wearing headphones. Joan coughs blatantly and Kitty veers left, prompting an indignant shout from her little boss, who doesn't notice the woman in their way or how they bypass her entirely.

"You must be so glad you came to visit me," Kitty mutters. The air fills with the gasps of adults and the restrained excited laughter of the girls. They've reached their destination.

"Yeah, remind me to thank you for being in my life later," Joan says under her breath, as Simone and Natasha skip around their captives, singing.

_Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day._

~~~

Kitty sees her reflection in the mirror and instantly bursts out laughing.

"Pretty obvious why their mom and the social worker were almost doubled over," Joan remarks as she carefully undoes the "braids" that had been put in her hair. The face tattoo, it turns out, was a Care Bear. The yellow one. She wonders how long she'll be finding glitter, if a year from now she'll spy a tiny sparkle on her clothes and it will automatically transport her back to this day. 

Her smile fades wistfully as she watches Kitty. When they met, she never would have thought they'd end up like this, exhausted and companionable in a public restroom after working together to distract a couple of children. Kitty runs her fingers over her skin, stopping with a laugh as she finds a wonky green star drawn on--incomprehensibly--her neck. After cleaning off the magic marker, she pulls a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and gives them to Joan. Their fingers touch. 

Joan can't help remembering the flinches, the threatened looks, the outright hostility. _You have come so far._ Kitty has hardly become a saint, or a pushover. If she had, she'd never be able to do her current job. Bounty hunters need a certain amount of armor. The difference is that now she lets it down occasionally, during the afternoons she volunteers at this battered women's shelter, for example. She's confident that she can put it back up again when its needed. 

Unbidden, the memories of that awkward, formative time continue. Kitty's struggle to hold herself apart gave way in a thousand tiny gestures over the months. Shared smirks, micro-confessions, relaxed boundaries. Joan wears her own armor, and that too acquired strategic cracks over time. It began with learning who Kitty was right then, the survivor, the apprentice, and expanded as Joan saw glimpses of who Kitty had been, then who she was growing into. 

Kitty is a brilliant, talented, fiercely loving, and above it all resilient young woman, and the only reason their paths ever crossed at all was a complete twist of fate. "Thank you," Joan says. There's a lump in her throat. Joan coughs, embarrassed. Kitty says nothing. She begins to hum quietly as she strips the primary-colored polish from her nails. Joan gives up trying to identify the tune after about a minute, as she abandons the last braid for being particularly tangled and starts on her own nails. The orange turns out to be the easiest shade to get rid of, then the green. The red may leave traces in Joan's nail beds that will still be there on her deathbed.

Looking twenty degrees less like a character from children's television than she had when they came in, Kitty washes her hands and favors her restored countenance with a slight nod. "Mm." Slowly she swivels, her hand out, reaching toward Joan's hair. She bites her lip in concentration, pulling every so often as she tackles the braid. Joan keeps her little expressions of pain to herself. 

"Ouch!" For the most part.

Kitty lifts one corner of her mouth in apology and adjusts the hair over Joan's shoulder. "All sorted now." A bare second ticks by, then she pulls Joan into an embrace. "Thank _you_ ," she whispers. Joan briefly considers holding her tighter, squeezing into the hug all the things she can't articulate. 

They still have two days together. She'll find some way to get her point across.


End file.
